20
votes
Kerbal Space Program 2 development history
Link information
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- Title
- "Doomed from the start" - KSP2 Development History FINALLY Revealed
- Authors
- ShadowZone
- Duration
- 48:16
- Published
- May 24 2024
A video by ShadowZone, a long-time Kerbal Space Program (KSP) youtuber, where he summarizes a timeline that he has been able to build of the development of KSP 2, with the claimed help of anonymous sources that are linked to the development.
KSP 2 was/is a long awaited sequel to the much beloved spaceship builder and simulation game. Much of its development has been very much hidden from public view. With only the occasional peaks into a game that looked overambitious, long delayed, and with shoddy management. It all cumulated in a very ill received early access that sadly confirmed many players fears. Development seems to have attempted to truck on after that, with some updates over the next year to get rid of the most aggrieves of issues. Though a month or so ago it came out that the publisher Take 2 was laying off big parts of their operations in the regions that the KSP2 team resided in, leading to the speculation that KSP2 had been killed off for good. Whether that is the case is not really known yet.
When I personally tried the early access, I played around with it for maybe an hour before concluding that there was something very wrong with the fundamentals and promptly refunded. For a game like KSP I imagined that any proper sequel should start with some serious prerequisite prototyping work to solve the engineering challenges that KSP presents, such that main development can be built on very solid foundations. It was this prerequisite work that I did feel was skipped when I tried the early access. But I'm just a systems engineer, not specifically game dev.
This video goes into details of the changing project vision, constant mismanagement, corporate takeover, and strange decisions that should have been just a straightforward continuation of our cute little green mischiefs.
Two weeks ago another popular KSP youtuber released another video which was an interview with the original creator of KSP. In this older video the creator tell of the confusion over the fact that he has never been contacted to consult regarding KSP2. This newer video now reveals that there was an overall ban on any contact with KSP1 developers what so ever up on till they were brought into the project very late in development. This is despite the fact that the KSP2 team was ordered to work off of the original KSP1 source code which none of the team members had any experience with.
The big takeaway I got from this is basically:
Take Two gave Star Theory a budget of 2 years and 10 million dollars to make KSP 2 and Star Theory agreed with this offer assuming they were just going to re-do KSP with less technical debt, better graphics and some more features, which is the kind of project Take-Two already had in mind and based this budget off of anyway
Nate Simpson (the guy in Star Theory studios who heard this and decided to take charge of the project) was a true fan of KSP (which really contrasts with the popular portrayal of him as basically the bad guy) and instead proposed an enormous reimagining of KSP with colonies, interstellar, multiplayer and all the features we saw in trailers over the years and convinced Star Theory that pursuing this grandiose vision was worth it
Take Two refused to change the budget to match the scale of Nate's dream and thus forced everyone who worked in the project to act like they were still developing an improved version of KSP 1 to the point of forcing everyone to reuse much of KSP 1's source code (while also forcing them to stay away from everyone who made said code)
And basically the effect was that the developers (many of whom just came to work on a project they couldn't know anything about) couldn't meet all these contradictory demands (and Nate Simpson is an artist at heart and all the physics and math and whatnot that goes into a space game just wasn't really what he wanted to expand upon in the game unlike graphics and lore and visuals) and made a mess of a game.
One thing I fond worth noting I that lots of people said they didn't want KSP 2 to just be a glamorized version of KSP which would be basically equivalent to KSP with some graphics and they were happy with Nate's expanded vision of the new game because it meant KSP 2 would be meaningfully larger then KSP 1. This basically makes it clear that KSP 2 was supposed to be exactly the type of cash grab they were afraid of and Take 2 did everything it could to keep KSP 2 in line with that original plan but Nate insisted on his dream and the worst of both worlds came true.
I never usually buy early access, man do I regret breaking my rule on this one.
It sucks all the more because KSP1 was such the exception.
I was so hype for KSP 2, glad I didn't get it when the beta was released. Because of all the problems it had I honestly forgot about it. I hope the devs haven't forgotten about it either and turn it around.
I'm going to have to come back to that video when I have a chance to watch the whole thing... but is KSP 2 officially dead now?
Not officially no. They are continuing with the secrecy policy, so we don't really have much info. And the video focuses on development up to just after early access release.